In conventional arrangements of circuit boards in a housing, several problems often arise. First of all, in the context of a hybrid or mixed assembly of surface mount devices (SMDs) as well as wire-bonded or wired components arranged on a circuit board, the circuit board and thus also the housing must be dimensioned excessively large in order to accommodate the relatively large wired components. Secondly, difficulties arise because the same soldering process is not suitable for soldering the two different types of components onto the same side of the same circuit board. Namely, a reflow soldering process that is suitable for soldering the surface mount devices cannot be used for soldering the wired devices onto the board.
It has been attempted in the art to solve the soldering problems affecting mixed or hybrid assemblies including different types of components to be mounted on a circuit board, in that an adapter made of plastic is inserted between each respective wired component and the circuit board, and the connectors of the component are bent over so that they extend substantially parallel to the surface of the circuit board. However, such a process and arrangement involves increased costs due to the use of the adapter and additional mounting steps necessitated thereby. As a further disadvantage, the soldered connections become more sensitive to vibrations and the like, which arise if the finished electronic assembly incorporating the circuit board is to be mounted in a motor vehicle, for example.
Furthermore, some electronic components such as electrolyte capacitors cannot be soldered onto a circuit board by the reflow soldering process, despite the use of an adapter as described above, because the high temperatures arising during the soldering process can disrupt or destroy the electrolyte capacitor due to the gas pressure arising internally within the capacitor at such elevated temperatures. A further inescapable problem in arranging wired components on a circuit board is that these components thereby use up a relatively large surface area of the expensive "real estate" of the circuit board surface, and correspondingly require a large-sized housing.